Casper 2.0 - Last Week of Fall Teaching Practicum

Believe it or not, our Fall Semester with the Teton Science Schools is slowly coming to a close.  Can you believe that?!  I cannot!  I feel like we practically just started class, like yesterday.  Time has flown!

So, yesterday (at least for the Outreach Team) we completed our Fall classes, ending with our last week of our Fall Teaching Practicum.  The Field Education Teams will finish their practicums on Saturday morning when they send their students home.

For our last week of Fall Teaching Practicum, the Outreach Team went back to Casper to work and teach at a few different schools.  For me, I was team teaching with Hazel in a 4th Grade Sense of Place program for the first part of the week and then concluding my teaching practicum solo teaching 4th and 5th Grade in a Water and Ecosystems Program.

These two classes were phenomenal, awesome to work with, and inspiring on what connection they made on their own: it was a nice way to end on a great teaching high was a great conclusion to my first teaching practicum.

So, I definitely wanted to talk about the 4th graders that Hazel and I worked with - they were awesome: very engaged and determined.  I had never taught Sense of Place before as the main focus, so it was a a great opportunity to try something new, not to mention this whole 'place' concept was still fresh from Place-Based Education.

For our 2-day program, we wanted the class to get a better understanding of the place and space that encompassed their school, build a sense of community and team unity, and conduct a science inquiry field study that focused on and surrounded the area near their school.

4th Grade - Day One Event Path Map

Sense of Place KWL Chart

In order to get their minds wrapped around our project, we created a lesson plan where the class was to tackle the idea of using the scientific process to help them formulate a plan of action - starting with a mock-science investigation of determining which animal created a given plaster cast to each student team.

Together within their small groups, they performed each of the steps in the science circle from forming a question about 'What type of animal track was given to us?' to creating a hypothesis, developing a plan, collecting data about their track, and concluding a answer.

The students did a great job working together as a team, developing plans and steps, using pieces of equipment, and collaborating together to decipher which animal made the track.

The next step was to tie this idea of using the science circle and connect it with their place around their school.  We wanted to know what the students already knew about wanted to know about their neighborhood.  Having each student write down in a KWL (Know, Want to Know, and Learn) Chart, they were able to write down ideas or things they already knew about their neighborhood around their school and questions they wanted to learn more about.

Hypotheses for 4th Grade Sense of Place Science Inquiry
How much trash can be found in North Casper's Schoolyard or in the neighborhood park?

Based on the popular topics they students came up with after sharing as a class about what they wanted to know, we decided to let the students lead on this part of the project.  The topics of question were: animals, trash, and trees.  To narrow down the topics to one, we had a closed, private vote, where each student private voted on one of the topics.

After choosing the topic of trash, Hazel and I had the class have a silent conversation as a class on a huge piece of poster paper.  Each student wrote on this poster about ideas and questions that they had about trash in their community.

After a group consensus, the class chose to work together on determining whether there was more trash found at their school or if there was more trash at their public park.

The Design Plan

We wanted the class to feel like they had full ownership of this project, so we asked them to come up with some ideas on how they would be able to collect data on which area had more trash.  The students worked together as a team to create a plan on performing a trash collection and count at each location.  They devised what materials they would need, specific individual jobs and roles, where we would go, safety precautions, and how data would be collected.

4th Grade - Day Two Event Path Map

The next day, we went to both locations and performed the design plan and collection of data.  The students were incredibly enthusiastic about picking up trash (which was an awesome and surprising thing to see for fourth graders and a form of community service).

Caterpillar Walk in the Park

Cannot Use Your Sight...What Do You Notice?

Going back to the class, we analyzed the data and determined there was more pieces of trash and school, but there were much bigger pieces of trash found at the park.

We asked the students what they thought about this new discovery based on the data and they concluded that there were more, little pieces at school because people may not pick up the trash and will step on them, creating more smaller pieces of trash.


We then asked the students to create a skit about what they learned and what we could do after their time with TSS was done.  The students were incredibly creative and dedicated to these skits.  Some talked about how it is important to keep their neighborhood clean and respect it to others talking about how we have these public places that we all share and if they are destroyed (by trash), no one can enjoy them.  As a result the students stated there could be weekly trash pick-ups in their neighborhood around their school to help keep their school and park clean so everyone can enjoy them.


As a result, the their school teacher informed us that she is planning on continuing this project of a weekly trash pick-up around their school to help keep the idea of community and environmental respect in her student's minds.

We thought the 2-day lesson went really well.  This was a really inspiring teaching moment for Hazel and I.  Not only did we help connect our student's minds on a much deeper sense of place of their school and neighborhood, but also we tied in a sense of working together as team can help accomplish a goal with an environmental respect in mind.

Wonder Bar in Wyoming?
Pssshhhhht.  You Got Nothing on Asbury Park's Wonder Bar!

On a side note, that evening, we went to the Wonder Bar in Casper...totally made me chuckle and think of home.  Very skeptical on how the Wonder Bar in WY would or could compare to the Wonder Bar in NJ...definitely could not compare.  NJ all the way. ;)

Great End to my Fall TSS Semester.
Only 28 more days til I step foot on the East Coast! Boom!
TheChristyBel